New member of the club.

Jumping back in here: As a dude who's had knee, shoulder and prostate surgery, I can say with some authority that the pain level of a DaVinci RP is microscopic to most arthroscopic surgical procedures. I was on major pain meds (Percocet?) for 10 days - 2 weeks with the knee, about 1 week with the shoulder, and I think I went home with Tylenol with codine for the prostate - and I used that very sparingly. (Disclosure - I had a lot of work done on both joints. There are some people who go in for a knee scope, have a little torn cartiledge cut out, and they're doing jumping jacks in 48 hours. Me? My knee was the size of half a basketball for 2 weeks, and I was on one or 2 crutches for a month.)

Purgatory - with the open surgery, my impression is that they have to cut through a lot of skin tissue and heavy muscle tissue. That's where the pain in recovery comes from. With robotic, they make small incisions in 5 different locations, and I believe they manage to miss most heavy muscle masses. Most robotic patients live on Tylenol due to some discomfort from internal healing - which is less painful than skin and muscles knitting themselves back together But the actual surgical incisions in my case were about 99% pain free - and certainly MUCH less than the knee or shoulder.

As for BMs - good grief. My doctor/hospital did not worry about it at all, some guys on this site have said they were not allowed to go home until they had a BM, so I don't have a clue as to what is "supposed" to happen. All I know is, they don't want you to "push" for about a week - because prostate surgery takes place right around the rectal wall and it gets pushed around or bruised or whatever (some guys - like ME! - experience a buttload of pain down there for weeks after the surgery). Therefore - stool softeners are a must.

kcragman

kcragman,
You wrote a pretty accurate description of the surical incisions from the open RP. The first 10 days, felt a lot of incision pain directly, after they took out around 35 staples, that pain almost was gone. The next 20 days or so, most of the pain was on the internal side, to the left and right of the main incision. And like many men here complain of, that high up, deep butt type pain. I still have trouble with that if I sit for long on anything firm or hard. My car has really supportative leather seats, when I was well, great, but now, it can start to hurting if I stay in the seat for too long.

David in SC